The present invention relates to a medicine supply apparatus which supplies medicine contained in a tablet case to a container (phial or bag), and the like by the quantity designated by a prescription in a hospital, and the like.
In hospitals or pharmacies, for example, as described in Japanese Utility Model Publication No. 5282/1982 (B65B1/30), a medicine supply apparatus (referred to as a tablet packing machine in the publication) has been heretofore used to dispense the medicine prescribed by a doctor to a patient. In such system the quantity described in the prescription of the medicines (tablets, capsules, and the like) is discharged from a discharge drum (referred to as an alignment board in the above-described publication) in the tablet case one by one, subsequently collected by a hopper and packed.
Additionally, the storage position of the tablet case is predetermined in accordance with the contained medicine, and the dispensing operation has been performed by distinguishing by the position the tablet case in which the medicine designated by the prescription is contained. Therefore, when the tablet case is stored in a wrong position, the medicine different from that of the prescription is accidentally discharged.
To solve the problem, for example, in Japanese Utility Model Publication No. 49044/1992, a detachable pin is attached to the tablet case, and the tablet case is prevented from being stored in a position other than the position predetermined by the pin attaching position.
However, in such structure the tablet case position is set by extracting/inserting the pin, and the operation is therefore intricate, and further when the pin breaks or drops during the attaching/detaching operation, there is a problem that the case is stored in the wrong position and the wrong medicine is supplied.
The present invention has been developed to solve such conventional technical problem, and provides a medicine supply apparatus which can easily and securely prevent a disadvantage that the medicine is wrongly supplied.
According to the present invention, there is provided a medicine supply apparatus comprising: a plurality of tablet cases stored in a main body case storage part, each tablet case including a container for containing a medicine, and a discharge drum for discharging the medicine from the container, each tablet case being provided with a memory in which identification data for identifying the tablet case is written; and a controller for identifying the tablet case based on the identification data in the memory of each tablet case, and executing the drive control of the discharge drum of each tablet case.
Moreover, according to the present invention, there is provided a medicine supply apparatus comprising: a plurality of tablet cases stored in a main body case storage part, each tablet case including a container for containing a medicine, and a discharge drum for discharging the medicine from the container, each tablet case being provided with a memory in which address data concerning the position to store the tablet case in the case storage part is written; and a controller for judging based on the address data in the memory of each tablet case whether the tablet case is stored in a wrong position or not, and executing a predetermined alarm operation when the tablet case is inserted into the wrong position.